Sailing into the week

Monday, September 16, 2013

Is anyone watching the America's Cup yacht race? Held in San Francisco we are hoping Team New Zealand can win this cup again and bring it to Auckland. The country is coming to a standstill when the races are held, and they are amazingly good TV viewing. Amazing the difference from last time we won the cup, with onboard cameras, great computer graphics, shorter races & man do those yachts just sizzle along. Closest I could find to a yacht emoticon, LoL.

Today I spent the morning doing food prep for the week. I am finding this really helpful. I am not a good food tracker and I don't know why but I do not plan my menus, I just buy the ingredients I like the look of, and we make meals from there.

Though I don't have a menu plan for the week, I do chop up some appropriate vegetables and put them in sealed containers (cucumber, cabbage, broccoli & coleslaw this week), hardboil eggs, stew fruit (rhubarb; pears & ginger), make soup (Italian tomato & bean), breakfast (crockpot steel cut oats & apple), desserts (berry jelly; chia pudding) whip cream & make dressings & yoghurt. So in addition to salad greens, we have coleslaw to grab & go for work lunches, and everything is ready for quick dinner prep. Anything not used at the end of the week goes into the soup pot or the freezer.

I'm surprised how long this takes me, a good couple of hours in the morning, quick cleanup then hustle along for my swim & pick up any groceries I notice we need...

When my girls were teenagers, I would cook and prep a lot for the week on Sunday. I got out of the habit. You have reminded me that I need to get back into the habit. Yes, it seems like a lot of work at one time, but it does save time during the week.

Exactly what I do: prep salads for lunches (with chopped fruit) during the week, and whatever fresh veggies I haven't used by Saturday go into a big pot of soup for the following week's suppers!! So when I walk in the door from work, ravishingly hungry, it takes only minutes to warm a bowl in the microwave. Never get tired of this -- it's a big range of different veggies, changed up with different salad dressings and different soup seasonings basically. Much easier to resist temptation when the decision has already been made about what I'm eating!

I try to be that organized. Lately my weekend have been full, so I have resorted to easy to make salads and quick whole wheat pasta dishes. It looks like life will be slowing down a little, so tonight I go grocery shopping with plans to do the same.

I do exactly the same thing when my weekend isn't hectic!Sunday is usually my cook for the week day and my refrigerator gets piled high with containers.Fortunately for me several weeks ago I acquired a large amount of bell peppers and needed something to cook.I made a bean and pepper chili and had enough to freeze containers...the aha moment in my bad eating days!